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excepting the token of some information. I am concerned that you have already given over much too much of this to another. Will you tell me about the andalune around your heart?”
    “If you tell me how I can stop anyone else seeing it.”
    The elf whose name she did not know said, “Talismanic protection is the best I can offer.”
    “I’ll take it, and if you stiff me . . .”
    “If I stiff you, as you so eloquently put it, you will only find out too late.” His voice was calm but he smiled delicately. “Unfortunately you will have to keep trusting me to discover whether or not I am worthy of your investment.” He stood up and crossed the room to a fume cupboard. Beneath the glass hood of its extractor deck an old, much worn chest of drawers supported a marble slab. He unclipped the bindings which held the slab in place and hinged it aside, reaching into a narrow compartment beneath it. He returned to Lila with a delicate silver chain, upon which hung a garland of pink roses made from clusters of tiny gemstones.
    Amethysts , Tath said. Good enough against demons, and ninety percent of the eleven population, which makes him in the top ten. That means noble families and I must know him, so besides the fact you do not know his name I think you might assume you do not know his face either.
    “Not your colour,” Lila said aloud to her mentor, trying to lighten the mood, indeed, to do anything that could bring her back to the place where she could feel good about letting him into the sphere of her awareness again, with the solidity she used to have in him, like he was part of her furniture.
    “Nor do I need it. I am beyond the ability of such items to affect me for good or ill,” he said. “But I have charmed it to . . .”
    “When?” said Lila and Tath at the same moment.
    “As I took it out of its place.”
    Bad news. I didn’t spot anything. No words. No nothing. He must be a synae- thete.
    A what?
    They do not require a medium to access aetheric power. Such people are extremely rare, one in a billion. If that’s the case he may not even be an elf.
    Stop now. I can’t deal with this until later.
    As you wish. Be on your guard. But it may be the demon was right about one matter. He is showing you clearly the truth of his nature, and that should either honour or appal you, for no being of such power needs reveal themselves to another.
    Sarasilien—she could not think of him another way—placed the necklace around her throat and did up the catch.
    I wonder what else is on this thing? Tath worried.
    “Thank you.”
    He could be lying of course . . .
    “The dead elf in my chest thinks you’re lying about the necklace.”
    “Then they are a worthwhile ally. I assume that if you had wanted to be rid of them you would have achieved this or asked. Your secret is safe with me. But I wonder what motivates you. You struggle so hard to accept your change into a machine, why go further and become a boarding house to ghosts?”
    “I like variety?”
    The elf broke into a smile and then a quiet laugh.
    CHAPTER FOUR
    L ila sat in the Great Library of Bathshebat, chewing the end of her pencil. She was in a private turret, seated at a semicircular desk of exquisite workmanship, scrolls and books open around her. From their pages and runes a faint mist of colour and scent wove up into a pretty veil. Through this lacework she could easily see the pointed arches of the turret’s fine windows and through them across the city’s towers, parapets, pinnacles, domes, minarets, spires, and roofs. Jewel-like enamel and coloured tiles flourished in dazzling beauty everywhere beneath the sapphire blue of the sky. It was a riot of beauty.
    The pencil tasted of lemonade. Her notes—all handwritten, because there was no electricity in Demonia, and because she must have something that made her look scholarly—fluttered gently on the warm breeze and would have blown away except for the pretty dark-blue paperweight that held them